Friday, 31 December 2010

If one were to set out to destroy a race or ethnic group, history offers a selection of options as to how this can be achieved.

You can starve them to death in their millions, as Stalin did, and as Lenin had before him. You can force them to march through the desert until they drop dead through hunger and exhaustion as was the Turks' preferred method of dispatching some one and a half million Armenians, whilst the world was distracted by the first World War. Alternatively if you wish to speed up the process you can shoot them, bomb them, gas them as Saddam Hussein did to the Kurds, or merely hack them to bits with machetes, by which means the Rwandans slaughtered 800,000 people in a mere 100 days during 1994.

The problem with all those tried and tested means of eradicating large groups of people, is that it is almost impossible to hide what you have done from a world community, which, in the main, considers most forms of genocide to be morally unacceptable and a breach of international law.

The exception, of course, is the ANC government in South Africa, who have, so far quite effectively, managed to portray the racially motivated slaughter of members of an ethnic minority as being merely “crime related”, painting repeated acts of genocide as an unending series of “botched burglaries” or multiple “car-jackings gone wrong” . However, their success in hiding their own brand of blood stained ethnic cleansing, has been dependant upon the very special set of circumstances relating to South Africa, and, crucially, upon an outside world not wishing to know the truth.

As such the South African model is unlikely to translate as successfully beyond the dark continent's southern region, and the violent slaughter of a selected ethnic group in any other part of the world, particularly the West, would be less easy to conceal.

However, although there is effectively only one word for genocide, it can come in many forms. To commit genocide, it is not always necessary to perpetrate acts of violence, or indeed murder. There are many definitions of genocide, all equally effective, albeit not all as speedy as the ones chosen in Rwanda.

If one was prepared to take time and if one was sufficiently ideologically committed to embark upon a genocidal enterprise, the conclusion of which one might personally not live to see, then it is entirely possible to achieve the gradual genocide by stealth of a vast target group without the perpetrators ever having to reveal their blood stained hands.

One need only create the conditions in which the target group will cooperate with its own destruction, and, with any luck, not awake to what is happening until too late.

Travel with me now gentle reader and I will explain to you why some believe that the greatest act of genocide in human history is currently being attempted, and how that act may already well on its way to being achieved.

First we need to understand what genocide is. Amongst the United Nations definitions of Acts of Genocide (1) you will find along with the acts of war and violence, the following two definitions which also constitute genocide:

Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the targeted group

Deliberately inflicting on the targeted group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.

Bearing the points above in mind I invite you to consider where we, the native peoples of Europe have been brought to, in particular over the 65 years since the guns fell silent at the end of a war which our grandfathers were told they were fighting in order to save the future for their children.

Far from saving the future for their children, I would suggest to you that, since World War II, conditions of life have been introduced by those who hold power over us which are calculated to bring about the destruction, at the very least in part, of those very children, the native people of Europe. Meanwhile measures have been introduced intended to significantly reduce the number of Native European births.

Seen in isolation, much of what has happened appears quite harmless, in some instances even beneficial, however, when viewed all together a far darker picture begins to emerge:

A victim will the more willingly drink his poison if its made to taste sweet, and what was sweeter than a sexual revolution without the inconvenience of pregnancy. Forms of contraception have existed with varying degrees of effectiveness for hundreds of years, but never before has it been so easy to avoid getting pregnant. Many will argue that the avoidance of an unwanted pregnancy is beneficial, they will point to the shame and social exclusion of unwed mothers in the past, to prematurely aged women brought to early graves by repeated child bearing, to the financial burden which large families can cause and of course they are correct in some degree, albeit certainly not in the numbers they inevitably claim.

I will not deny that effective, and easily accessible, contraception has benefits for individuals, however, millions of indigenous European children, whom nature intended to be conceived, have not been conceived as a direct result of the contraceptive pill, and the benefits, if any, of that loss to us collectively as European people are less easy to quantify.

As I type this I can already hear the shrill squawks of derision from the trolls and intellectual pygmies at forums such as fstdt.net, who monitor this blog from time to time, and, no doubt, some more grown up readers will raise a sceptical eye-brow at the linkage of oral contraception to genocide. However, I would ask you to put your prejudice to one side and consider these things in context. This is but one aspect of many and, when so many coincidences lead in one direction it is hard to ignore a design.

The contraceptive pill, initially available to married women as a means of family planning, is now celebrated as a weapon of female liberation and heavily promoted within white western nations. It is, of course, also a means of not having children in the numbers which any race needs in order to survive.

Even when the pill fails, it is now, for the first time in history, easy and, in almost every western nation, legal to terminate unwanted pregnancies. As a result of laws passed at the same time that the contraceptive pill was being made widely available, across the West millions upon millions of unborn children have been killed, mainly, to a huge degree, for reasons of convenience rather than medical necessity (including what might be called the “dump the boyfriend, kill the kid” scenario)

Again as with contraception, abortion is portrayed as both a right and a further means of liberating women, in fact it is implied that to be opposed to abortion is to to be anti-women. Indeed, popular culture regularly depicts those who are pro-life as being evil or unbalanced, meanwhile, people who are pro-choice/pro-death are portrayed as decent, rational and even rather heroic. As we all know when the media resort to propaganda, they have an agenda.

Is it just coincidence that the two greatest social changes, effecting human reproduction, in the second half of the the 20th Century resulted in tens of millions of western children not being born? If so, then here is another coincidence.

There are, of course, other, less obvious ways of preventing births than merely preventing conception or by killing foetuses, you need only create an environment which discourages the target group from reproducing. As a result of successive deliberate economic policies during exactly the same historical period during which the changes described above were taking place, the vast majority of women are now forced to work, rather than stay at home and raise families.

They are, of course, told that being away from home anything up to twelve or more hours a day (and for most of us remote linking or bringing work home at night) is liberating, whereas, in fact, they have no option.

What has changed? It has far less to do with social attitudes than it has with the new economic reality. As recently as the 1960's the average man's take home pay was sufficient to support his home and his family, which was, on average, larger than a modern western family. That is no longer possible for anyone under executive level and only then if the husband commutes for hours each day.

This didn't happen by accident, it didn't happen due to natural progression, it was the result of deliberate political acts and government policy.

For instance, one of the reasons why men's wages have not kept pace with the cost of maintaining a home and family is mass immigration, which has been cynically used to depress wages.

A recent study (2) in America estimated that by pushing down wages, immigration triggers a substantial redistribution of income from native-born workers to native-born owners of capital. It was calculated that this redistribution amounts to about 2 percent of GDP, or a whopping $250 billion annually at current levels. And it is the native elites who gain this sum at the expense of native workers, who's wages are kept artificially low.

A similar figure will certainly apply to Europe, where mass immigration is also forcing down wages. Consequently, most men can no longer support their families single handedly. As a direct result most woman now work, and most working woman put off having children and have less children than previous generations. I repeat, it is a lie to say women now have the “choice” to work, they have no choice, they have no option but to work. That is not liberation.

Whatever your views on contraceptives, abortion and working woman (I am certainly in favour of women being free to choose to work) it is impossible to deny that, as described above, whether deliberately or otherwise, measures, resulting from deliberate government policy, have been put in place in every Western Nation all of which have drastically reduced the birth rate amongst native Europeans. None of it occurred naturally, and none of it was unavoidable.

That sounds very much like one of the UN's definitions of genocide to me.

Meanwhile, Western governments pump billions of dollars each year into aid programmes designed to increase the birth rate non-European countries. The same ministers who promote abortion at home celebrate reductions in child mortality in third world countries, is this not a double standard?

Whilst our population ages and our birth rate falls, the non-European population of the world is increasing to unsustainable levels

At the time of the Live Aid appeal in 1984, the population of Ethiopia was 42 million, it is now almost 81 million and projected to reach 145 million by 2050, and that is all Ethiopians (there is not much immigration into Ethiopia).

Zimbabwe apart, similar examples apply in almost every third world country. In 1950 the population of Pakistan, another recipient of significant European aid and a net exporter of immigrants, was 40 Million, it is now 169 million and expected to reach 295 million by 2050 (3).

Meanwhile the native population of Europe is plummeting and in both respects the cause of the demographic change can be traced to the deliberate acts of Western governments.

Siren voices whisper moral blackmail into our Western ears “We must reduce our population further to save the planet” but this propaganda is only aimed at us, the white west, the only single group on the planet which desperately needs to increase its population in order to survive.

Why? Is it not obvious to anyone with the ability still to think that, if our overlords are deliberately pursuing policies designed to reduce the population of Group A whilst massively increasing the population of Group B, they have an agenda?

Our shrinking birth rate, which our governments have arguably conspired to create, is the excuse they then give for importing millions upon millions, upon million, upon millions of immigrants into our homelands in order to replace what we have not produced, that is to say, in order to replace us.

And this brings us to the second of the two definitions of genocide the deliberate infliction on the targeted group of conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. It is that second act of genocide which I will address in part 2 of this essay

Wednesday, 29 December 2010

In a perceptive posting at the Brussels Journal, A Millar provides an analysis of 2010, including the following summary of month by month events in the UK, drawing an uncomfortable picture of how close we have now moved towards the edge:

January:

The extremist group Islam4UK is banned. Former Islam4UK leader Anjem Choudary appears on BBC chat show the Daily Politics [video] following the ban, describing it as “a waste of time.”

The Telegraph reports that the governing Labour Party has been infiltrated by Islamic extremists: “The Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE) — which believes in jihad and sharia law, and wants to turn Britain and Europe into an Islamic state — has placed sympathizers in elected office and claims, correctly, to be able to achieve ‘mass mobilization’ of voters.” (See October.)

March:

Geert Wilders screens Fitna in the House of Lords, at the invitation of Lord Pearson (UKIP) and Baronness Cox. Wilders tells the audience: “As you undoubtedly all know, better then I do, also in your country the mass immigration and Islamization has rapidly increased. This has put an enormous pressure on your British society. Look what is happening in for example Birmingham, Leeds, Bradford and here in London. British politicians who have forgotten about Winston Churchill have now taken the path of least resistance. They have given up. They have given in.”

Respect Party candidate George Galloway is attacked by three Muslim men. According to his spokesman, “They were shouting 'kafir', which is very insulting, and that Mr Galloway deserved to die. They were very aggressive and then they lunged forward towards Mr Galloway. I would certainly consider it an attack.” Galloway is a well-known pro-Palestinian campaigner often considered to be pro-Hamas (Galloway denies this accusation).

May:

David Cameron calls the anti-Islamist protest group the English Defence League “terrible people” and says they will be kept under review, and “if we needed to ban them, we would ban them or any groups which incite hatred.”

Several smaller parties, including the Democratic Unionist Party, the Scottish National Party, and Sinn Fein, also secure a number of MPs. The Greens Party wins its first seat. Caroline Lucas, a member of the European Parliament for the South East of England since 1999, and a former Oxfam advisor, becomes the Greens’ first MP. The Times calls it “an historic victory”.

With no party having an outright majority (over the other parties if their votes are combined), the result is a hung parliament. The Left-wing Lib Dems negotiate with both Labour and the Conservatives to see if they can make a deal to become a part of a coalition government.

Gordon Brown formally resigns as Prime Minister. In his resignation speech he says that “Above all, it was a privilege to serve. And yes, I loved the job not for its prestige, its titles and its ceremony - which I do not love at all. No, I loved the job for its potential to make this country I love fairer, more tolerant, more green, more democratic, more prosperous and more just – truly a greater Britain.”

Minister for Security, Baroness Neville-Jones gives her first television interview to the Islam Channel [video] – the station had been previously accused of advocating marital rape and backing extremist Islamist organizations.

The press reports that radical Indian preacher Zakir Naik will speak in London and Sheffield. Naik has said of Osama bin Laden that “if he is terrorizing America the terrorist[…] I am with him. Every Muslim should be a terrorist[…] If [bin Laden’s] terrorizing a terrorist he’s following Islam” [video].

Douglas Murray notes in The Telegraph that the chair and vice chair of the Conservative Party’s Conservative Muslim Forum had earlier presented a check for 5,000 pounds to al-Khair, one of the charities hosting Naik, at the launch of Iqra TV, another sponsor of the Indian preacher’s “peace conference.” This, Murray suggests, shows that “groups like the Conservative Muslim Forum within political parties are not merely an embarrassment, but a liability.”

July:

David Cameron visits the predominantly Muslim nation of Turkey, with 70 million citizens. Standing with the Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara, he lambastes “protectionists” and the “prejudiced [who] willfully misunderstand Islam” for preventing Turkey’s bid for EU membership. Cameron describes himself as Turkey’s “strongest possible advocate for EU membership”, which would allow Turkey’s citizens to live and work in Britain. He also verbally attacks Israel. He suggests that it is responsible for turning Gaza (which also borders Egypt) into “a prison camp.” American conservatives express their dismay.

September:

Aide to the pope, Cardinal Walter Kasper, 77, provokes a minor storm in the British press after he appears to criticize multiculturalism in the UK in an interview with the German magazine Focus. He tells the magazine that arriving in Britain is like stepping off a plane into a “third world country.” He also complains of an “aggressive new atheism” infecting the country.

A newly-formed group calling itself “Muslims Against Crusades” demonstrates outside the US embassy in London, burning the American flag. Anjem Choudary (see January) addresses the crowd.

An Afghan Taliban leader tells Sky News that, “We will attack Britain […]. We have trustworthy people who will listen to us and are waiting for our orders.”

California state senate candidate Rabbi Nachum Shifren speaks at an English Defence League rally outside the Israeli embassy, after encouraging British Jews to support the grassroots movement. Speaking to the crowd, he says: “History will be recorded that on this day, read by our children for eternity, one group lit the spark to liberate us from the oppressors of our two governments and the leftist, fifth column, quisling press, and that it was the EDL which started the liberation of England from evil.”

A bomb is sent from Yemen, by an al-Qaeda operative, and destined for US synagogues. There is speculation that it has been timed to explode over Britain. Cameron says that the UK is cooperating with the US, and that this cooperation, and the modernity of the two nation states, is a strength in the war against terrorism [video].

It emerges that the coalition government will agree to a 2.9 per increase in the EU budget, resulting in British tax payers contributing at least 435 million British pounds sterling (nearly 700 million US dollars). Lord Tebbit says that “he [Cameron] would do better to go down fighting [against EU demands] than to surrender in some Vichy-style arrangement, pretending to hold on to sovereignty by agreeing to what Europe demands.” The Conservatives hail the 2.9 percent increase as a success, since a six percent increase had been proposed.

Lutfur Rahman is elected mayor of Tower Hamlets, a position that comes with a budget of more than one billion British pounds (more than 1.5 billion US dollars). He is alleged to have close ties to the Islamic Forum of Europe (see February), an Islamist organization that aims to reestablish the Caliphate. A senior Labour official for Tower Hamlets says that “It really is Britain’s Islamic republic now.”

Teachers are revealed to be reporting children as young as three years old for racism, as required by the Race Relations Act 2000. According to Munira Mirza, a senior advisor to London Mayor Boris Johnson, “Teachers are now required to report incidents of racist abuse among children as young as three to local authorities, resulting in a massive increase of cases and reinforcing the perception that we need an army of experts to manage race relations from cradle to grave.”

November:

Muslims Against Crusades disrupt Poppy Day commemorations, during which soldiers, families of deceased soldiers, politicians, etc., gather together to honor the bravery and sacrifices of the armed forces in defending Britain. Muslim Against Crusades burn a large poppy, chant (including throughout the minute silence for the deceased) “Allahu Akbar”, “British soldiers burn in Hell” and “your dead are in fire, and our dead are in paradise” [video].

Approximately 50,000 students protest in London against the government’s proposed fees hike for universities in England. The Conservative Party headquarters is attacked by a large mob. Windows are smashed, ceiling fixtures are ripped out. Walls are sprayed with graffiti. A number of students penetrate the building and make their way to the roof, where they continue to demonstrate. According to The Daily Mail “Militants from far-Left groups whipped up a mix of middle-class students and younger college and school pupils into a frenzy.”

Maulana Fazlur Rehman the pro-Taliban leader of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl is reported to have arrived in London. He will speak at the House of Lords on the issue of Kashmir. Ansar Burney, minister of human rights under Pervez Musharraf, calls for Fazlur Rehman to be banned from the UK because of his “nefarious and extremist political background, and known links with the Pakistani Taliban.” Burney alleges that Fazlur Rehman is “an ideological mentor to the Taliban.”

December:

Anjem Choudary (former leader of the banned Islam4UK organization) gets his own episode on Channel 4 TV. (In October Choudary told CNN that “I am in the camp of the Muslims; at the current time that is headed by sheikh Osama in Laden” [video])

Incited by socialist organizations, student/Leftist riots continue. Leftists/students attack the police with batons, metal poles, and metal fencing [video], deface the Cenotaph and urinate on a statue of Winston Churchill. During one riot, a mob makes its way to the busy shopping area of Regent Street where they attack the car carrying Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall. The attackers shout “whose streets? Our streets!” and “off with their heads!” [video]. The Socialist Workers Party calls for a “wider revolt” [pdf]. Revolution calls for a “revolutionary party that bases itself on the most militant sections of workers, young people, students and oppressed peoples and organizes them in such a way that can actually spark the overthrow of the capitalist system” [pdf].

Twelve Muslim men are arrested across the UK, accused of plotting to set off a number of bombs in a coordinated, large-scale attack. Reportedly the men are between 17 and 28 years old, British, largely of Bangladeshi origin. They are reportedly influenced by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Anwar al-Awlaki based in Yemen.

Wikileaks reveals that, according to one survey, approximately a third of Muslim students say that killing in the name of Islam is justified. Forty percent want Muslims to live under sharia law, and 54 percent want a Muslim party to represent their views in the British parliament.

Tommy Robinson, leader of the English Defence League (EDL), alleges a campaign of police intimidation, including “approaching criminals in prison, and offering them deals” to accuse him of being involved in criminal activity [video].

Guramit Singh, an unofficial spokesman for the EDL is arrested “on suspicion of intentionally causing religiously aggravated harassment alarm or distress” for a speech he made in Peterborough on December 11. During the speech, he describes Islam as a “threat” and Islam’s prophet as a “pedaphilic pirate” comparable to Adolf Hitler [video].

Abu Rumaysah, formerly of Islam4UK, launches a “Christmas is Evil” campaign. Posters with an image of the Star of Bethlehem over a Christmas tree and with the caption “the evils of Christmas” are displayed across London. The campaign claims that Christmas is responsible for rape, pedophilia, sexually transmitted diseases, abortion, debt, exploitation, night clubs, drugs, alcohol, paganism, etc. The campaign also encourages British people to adopt Islam, and describes the religion as “the way forward for Britain.” Lutfur Rahman, mayor of Tower Hamlets (see February and October), says that “The messages on these posters are offensive and do not reflect the views of the Council or the vast majority of residents.”

Pope Benedict delivers Christmas Eve message on BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day program. The Daily Mail calls it “a huge coup” for the BBC.

Monday, 27 December 2010

There is confusion about what art is. Distinctions and classifications are needed to clarify it. First, the qualities that make something art are intrinsic, not external. It is in the artifice, the organising of elements, perspective, choice of colour etc that makes it art because the result is obtained by transforming reality and thus nature, through human imagination and realised by skill and technique.

An example of the difference between nature and art is when I point my camera and record natural phenomena. If I take a sunset it is reproducing nature and is not art but nature. But if I then use the zoom function, it has the effect of condensing the distance and thereby magnifying the gold or red which is moving from nature to art.

The contemporary age is one of excess of technique but lacks deep emotion and transcendent vision. Jeff Robb, who has a permanent exhibition at the Victoria and Albert, uses a method of lenticular sheets which are only sold by one firm which is in Switzerland. This is very clever and often fascinating but the subject matter is ordinary - nudes. His art is the cleverness of what he does with the subject but he does not transform the actual subject. Far from just pointing a lens at landscapes and urbiscapes Jeff needs specific equipment and ink cartridges to produce his results. Technique is important but should be guided by the vision not for its own sake or it becomes empty form.

The qualities that qualify a work as art are intrinsic to art in general but Art with a capital "A" has an elevated, sublime, purpose and is only realised by a high quality of conception and execution. A visual object or experience created through an expression of skill or imagination. The term art covers various media: painting, sculpture, printmaking, drawing, decorative arts, photography, and installation. The various visual arts exist within a continuum that ranges from prompting deep feeling or transcendent emotion and great skill to reproducing figures or landscape which have a mood and also prompt thought or feelings.

Technique or genius; skill or a knack.

English philosopher Michael Oakeshott in discussing rationalism in politics, made a distinction between learning technique and what he called traditional knowledge. The second is instinct and intuition. In this case we would describe it as talent or genius relayed through skill. Oakeshott describes two sorts of knowledge:

"The first sort of knowledge I will call technical knowledge or knowledge of technique. In every art and science, and in every practical activity, a technique is involved. In many activities this practical knowledge is formulated into rules which are, or may be, deliberately learned, remembered, and, as we say, put into practice; but whether or not it is, or has been, precisely formulated, its chief characteristic is that it is susceptible of precise formulation, although special skill and insight.

The second sort of knowledge I will call practical, because it exists only in use, is not reflective and(unlike technique) can not be formulated in rules... In every activity this sort of knowledge is also involved; the mastery of any skill, the pursuit of any concrete activity is impossible without it."(1)

In art, this equates to the distinction between natural talent or genius and the skill and technique which realises the vision and meaning. Soccer players show a high degree of skill and to great players it is natural but developed by coaching and practice, but there is no high conception.

Everyday art fills our ordinary lives with meaning and provides different feelings as they have different purposes. At Kimbolton school the murals on walls and ceilings by Pellegrini give a sense of grandeur and seriousness and create a suitable frame of mind for study. On occasion there are external factors that help prompt the feelings.

A Liverpool pub, The Jacaranda, has a mural in the downstairs bar which John Lennon, and Stuart Sutcliffe, had a hand in painting when he was an art student, and this creates fascination and joy at the thought of someone so famous being part of it. The painting is well executed but not devoted to a high purpose, but conveys feelings because we know who was involved. In my last essay I referred to a strange painting on the inside of a cupboard in The Nags Head in Shrewsbury which, though not great art nonetheless produced feelings other than shock. A pub in Liverpool, the Peter Kavanagh has a very delightful mural based on Dickens characters in the snug-bar. The story is that an artist who was a regular customer in the 1930s could not afford to pay his tab for drinks on account, so painted the mural. It is delightful: it produces delight and merryment adds to the pubs character and raises it above the ordinary. (2)

The modern understanding of art derived from Abbe Batteux in the 1740s who regarded the essence as an "imitation of nature" and, principally, that it caused pleasure. They cause various mental states in the beholder. He defined these mental states as pleasure and the experience of beauty. Prior to this, individual modes of art were attached to various sciences like music to mathematics but this is the skill not the purpose. Kant promoted a universal criteria to decide if something was Art. He used a geometric idea of patterns of shapes and lines. In The Critique of Judgement he developed the notion of beauty as the cause of the the mentalstate.

In the 20th century art lost its meaning and the confusion over what art is arose. Dada artist Marcel Duchamp implied that it is enough for an artist to deem something "art" and put it in a publicly accepted venue. It does not matter where you stick a urinal it is always a urinal with a specific non-artistic purpose. To say something becomes art because you put it in a gallery is very muddled thinking. I had an experience in the Ikon gallery in Birmingham. The only objects with artistic qualities were the water closets and washroom taps which had pleasing curves and smooth surfaces but were not art but objects for specific non artistic purposes.

It is not the context of underpasses and bus shelters that makes or unmakes British street artist Banksy's work as art or otherwise: it has no artistic subject matter and is just technique. Artistic subject matter is realised through qualities of artifice and held together by purpose which concentrates the artifice and technique to the goal of producing art. (3)

George Dickie and Arthur Danto held that works of art are objects connected to various social practices. This again turns on beauty as some objects like the taps or a motor car can be beautiful but because they are not linked to the art world are not art whereas a painting, say, is. This is to define art by social function. To Dickie its about being self-assigned but you can put a car where you like it is always a car and its function is different from a work of art even if it is beautifully designed. When artists begin to create they have a purpose in mind and to bring this into being they use appropriate technique. They do not take into account aerodynamics, say, or how fast water pours out or precisely where its trajectory will take it as these are not part of the purpose. Though they are to engineers and designers of those functional objects.

I noted in my last essay how Damian Hirst's pickled shark was meaningless out of context because being dead it had lost its being which was when it was alive and swam and hunted in its natural habitat: in a glass tank it is out of context. The sea is a natural not artificial context.

This is the institutional theory of art which is a theory about the nature of art that holds that an object can only be art in the context of "the artworld". Danto wrote in: The Artworld: "To see something as art requires something the eye cannot descry-an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an art world." That has nothing to do with the work itself but where it is.

Nothing can make Duchamps "readymades" art because they were made for a specific non-artistic purpose. The theory does not change a pile of Brillo cartons in a supermarket into art, yet Danto thought if it was put in a gallery a substantive transformation took place. Andy Warhols pretentious Brillo Boxes (a pile of Brillo carton replicas, actually so they are doubley pretentious) are a pile of unartistic Brillo boxes wherever they are put.

Dickie's institutional theory can be assessed from the definition in Aesthetics: An Introduction: "A work of art in the classificatory sense is 1) an artifact 2) upon which some person or persons acting on behalf of a certain social institution (the artworld) has conferred the status of candidate for appreciation." What makes something art is the intention of producing traditional art through artifice and technique.

Tracey Emin and Damian Hirst have both declared works to be art because they say it is. They were promoted and financed by Saatchi who first declared their works art but he is not an artist. It is critics and elite art buyers who decide what is art and usually because of its commercial value but that is external to the work not intrinsic. They are right about the commercial value of objects but not about its classification as art because designating something as art because it has commercial value is to apply external or non intrinsic criteria as the standard of judgement. Many people are supposed to think they are Napoleon or important people but does that make them so?

This takes us back to Duchamps folly. This argument is that because he placed it in a gallery it became art. It is not assignation that makes art but the artifice guided by the purpose that is used to realise the vision and its meaning -it is intrinsic: it is in the finished work. Many works still fail to reach that goal. Picasso and Matisse also wanted to change art as they inherited it. Picasso: "Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs." Well, alright he has dismissed proportion but that is only one possible component.

When he became a Christian, Salvador Dali found an artistic subject and the inherent spirituality of the subject gave him a fuller, more elevated vision and he painted the masterpieces of the twentieth century. He was a skilled draftsman who developed his skills of realisation by studying Renaissance masters. Much criticism of Dali was because he supported General Franco rather than the fashionable armchair Marxism of the orthodox Surrealists and art critics. Breton banned Dali from The Surrealist movement in 1941 and tried to ban his "Sistine Madonna" from the International Surrealism Exhibition in New York in 1960.

His fascination with the hypercube a four-dimensional cube and unfolding of a hypercube is featured in "Corpus Hypercubus" which changes the traditional form but it is still recognisable and we know what it represents. His "Last Supper" and "The Christ of St.John of the Cross" (left) are the masterpieces of the twentieth century. This brings us to the essence of great Art: genius and inspiration.

Contemporary painters and makers of installations show contempt for the audience and do not work for the public good. They seek a response but it is a negative response. They are not geniuses and have to shock to get noticed. In fact they are not really artists - but purveyors of clever tricks without deep meaning. Art is communication but contemporary art fails to communicate because of a disjuncture between subject and beholder, form and purpose.

Thomas Carlyle's famous remark utilised by egalitarians that "Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains" is that capacity is attendant upon genius to realise the vision but not the imagination which is the creator of the vision. The taking of pains follows the original impulse.

The indefinable knack which is intuitive practice called genius. This is artistic judgement in the practice of painting when one just knows instinctively what to put or where. This knack is the artistic eye, artistic judgement and it is a non rational process - it is intuition or instinct and it is this that trained and developed technique realises."

I think John Dryden captures it :"But genius must be born, and never can be taught." It is the technique that is taught not the genius which is inborn as the qualities that make a work art are intrinsic to the work, not external nor contingent on where the work is put.

79 year old retired dairy-farm owner Marie Weilbach died in hospital on Christmas eve as the result of brain damage caused by a vicious attack on her by two farm workers, the day before, at her farm south of Johannesburg, following what the press are somewhat bizarrely describing as a "wage dispute". An explanation for black violence against whites, which gained popularity with the media earlier this year following the equally violent murder of Eugene Terreblanche.

Eon Viljoen shot the attackers

Ms. Weilbach's assailants Mhlushwa Khoza and Mbongiseni Hornsby were subsequently shot dead by her grandson Eon Viljoen when they attempted to ambush him with a shotgun and lead piping.

We await to see how the racist ANC government will react to a white man using lethal force to defend himself and his family from black aggression.

In a separate incident, I have been advised that a South African smallholder, Janine Meintjies, died on Christmas day following a hammer attack at her home in Dundee KwaZulu-Natal on Christmas Eve. I am unable to find news reports giving the circumstances of Ms Meintjies' death, or her age, other than that she was the mother of two small children.

Therefore, I have not yet included her as one of the victims of the on-going genocide pending receipt of further information. If anyone is able to provide additional details of this and other South African farm murders please forward them to me at sarahmaidofalbion@gmail.com.

Update 29/12/2010 : Thanks to Heather for providing this link giving some details of KwaZulu Natal attack, it appears Mrs. Meintjies survived the initial attack and managed to drive to a friend's house, the friend drove her to Dundee hospital, however, she died of her injuries while awaiting treatment. Link here

It is a truism to say that we live in an increasingly secular society. What those who welcome this present trend do not seem to realise is that it means the end of civilisation as we have known it. And if it were to continue and expand it would ultimately mean the end of any civilisation worthy of the name whatsoever.

A Society cannot survive without agreed Standards of Morality

Why so? Because a society cannot survive if there are no agreed standards of morality, and there can be no such standards without religion. That is because without religion the universe is meaningless. Our lives have no purpose beyond the animal urges endowed us by our genes which are themselves the mere accidental outcomes of physical laws.

In a Meaningless World, No one has the Right to decree Right and Wrong.

And so there can be no binding rules of behaviour on anyone, since if there is no absolute right or wrong, who or what is there to bind? And why should anyone behave in a way another wants him or her to behave? In such a world, if someone says to you, ‘you must behave in such and such a way,’ all one has to do is say, ‘I don’t agree’, because your preference is as good as anyone else’s.

Political Correctness: Merely the Preferences of the Left imposed through Power

That is or should be the end of it, but of course it isn’t, as we are seeing. Because the secularisers have tried to substitute Political Correctness for religion as the basis of morality. Since the nihilism on which Political Correctness is based denies that any one morality is superior to another, this means that their imposition of the morality of Political Correctness is invalid. But they choose to ignore that.

As Nietzsche foretold, what is left without religion is power and the Politically Correct merely impose their own preferences on the rest of us through the exercise of it. Whatever the secularisers might say about religion, they cannot claim that it is self contradictory in the imposition of morality in the way that Political Correctness is.

When there is no Religion and no Right or Wrong. What a Society on the Brink of Destruction Looks Like

In the 1930’s the pioneering Harvard Sociologist and historian Pitirim Sorokin predicted that values in the West would continue to be undermined, would become more and more influenced by relativistic thinking, would lose their binding power and would be .‘ground to dust’ Distinctions between right and wrong, true and false, beautiful and ugly and positive and negative would more and more disappear in the opaque and chaotic world of crumbling ‘sensate ‘ culture as he termed it.

Sorokin’s Chillingly Accurate Prophesy

He has been proved absolutely right. Huge numbers of people are increasingly incapable of telling right from wrong including politicians, judges, journalists and even many clergymen. A quick glance at Modern Art (where Lucian Freud for example depicts human beings as soulless mounds of flesh and Frances Bacon saw them as ugly, tortured and almost dissected, staring into the void), modern music (based round the rhythm of the sex act), modern architecture (which banishes the human and the fitting in favour of deliberately meaningless gimmickry and the celebration of glass, steel and concrete), the cinema and TV, ‘all show that the borderline between the beautiful and the ugly, the positive and the negative have been erased’.

Becoming more and more materialistic

Sorokin also asserted that Man himself in the declining modern world would become more materialistic and less spiritually minded. Science would seek to strip life of its sacred character (think genetic engineering, abortion on demand and ‘designer babies’) and Mankind would become increasingly debased and sensual (Any TV soap and many town centres on a Saturday night are proof of this).

Most people would ‘sink deeper into the muck of the sociological sewers’ and would be ‘progressively destructive rather than constructive, representing in their totality a museum of sociological pathology rather than the imperishable values of the Kingdom of God’ (It is hard to disagree with these remarks given the morality -free wastelands of so many of our towns and cities). The ancient place of true religion in society would be replaced by pseudo religions (such as Political Correctness, Environmentalism, all those little Buddhas used as ornaments, the devotion to ‘Yoga,’ the fawning over Islam etc. )

The Disappearance of Personal Honour and of Duty

Sorokin also predicted that ’contracts and covenants in our age would lose the remnants of their binding power.’ This would make virtually impossible the proper functioning of representative government. (Do you trust our politicians?)

The Rise in Violence and the Loss of Respect for the Law

With the fragmentation of other values, Sorokin predicted that respect for law and civil order would dramatically decrease. Government would turn to its only remaining weapons; naked force and fraud. There would be an increasing war of all against all (such as we are beginning to see in our inner cities), riots, civil disturbances and brutality would become commonplace. (Is this not true?).

The Hollowing out of the Meaning of Words Men once Died for.

Words which previously were meaningful such as ‘freedom’ would gradually lose their definition and become mere fiction. (We can see that in our ‘liberal’ ie ‘free’ society in which people are in reality less free than they have been since Cromwell). Our rights would be alienated. Constitutions would be abolished or used as ‘beautiful screens for an unadulterated coercion.’ (The enforcement of EU membership and mass immigration and multiculturalism on this country by its Political Class speaks for itself);

The Disintegration of the Family

Sorokin also foresaw the attack on the family as an institution and as the fundamental building block of society. The sacredness of the family unit, of husband, wife and children would continue to disintegrate. Genuine difference between marriage and illicit relationships would disappear. (Helped along by the ‘marriage’ of homosexuals). Children would be separated from their parents at an earlier and earlier age (as they are doing through divorce and separation). These trends would continue to accelerate until, he remarks, ‘the family becomes a mere accidental cohabitation for male and female while the home becomes a mere overnight parking place mainly for sex relationships.’ (This state of affairs has already arrived for many).

The Prediction of the Overwhelming of Western Civilisation

Sorokin wrote in the 1930’s that Western culture, as a separate entity, would soon be overwhelmed by a grotesque collage of bits and pieces of every culture on earth (‘enrichment’). Culturally speaking, he thought that our culture would become a bazaar like those of Cairo or Damascus with everything and anything tossed into a muddled heap.

The End of Creativity

Sorokin though that genuine creative thinking in the crippled remnants of Western Society would wither and die. The Beethovens, Newtons, Rembrandts Shakespeares of our former civilisation would be replaced by mediocrities (Tracy Emin, David Hockney etc) vulgar showmen, pseudo-thinkers (Foucault , Derrida, the Frankfurt School etc etc) and the like.

The End of Rising Living Standards

Finally, with the collapse of moral values and ethics and the withering of creativity, Sorokin saw that economic production would eventually decline, and that standards of living would grow worse. With this, security of life and of possessions would fade as would peace of mind and happiness. Violence and criminal activity would grow to terrifying proportions and ever –increasing numbers of people would grow weary from the struggle for existence. (The ultimate decline in living standards Sorokin foretold may or may not be here –watch this space - but the rise in criminality certainly is)

Sorokin’s truly chilling accuracy as to the way our society has evolved (written some 55-75 years ago let us not forget) demands that we take his ideas seriously.

___________________________________________

A Christmas Message of Hope - Part Two

By Tim Heydon

First the bad News : Western Culture is being overwhelmed by Foreign Elements

To recap, in Part One, we saw a truly bleak vision of what a secular world would be like and noted that our present society is already moving into this grim future. Overwhelmed by the sheer flood of foreign elements and incapable of discriminating between what is harmful and what is not, our culture has lost its confidence. It no longer believes in its own superiority and is disintegrating. Weak and ill, it betrays itself. The cultural outlook that dominated the world a mere hundred years ago is in its death throes.

Then the Good News.

Sorokin believed that the drive to materialism which is a function of the internal dynamics of all cultures would serve eventually and inevitably to bring about a change for the better in the West. He wrote, ‘In these conditions the Western population will not be able to help opening its eyes to the hollowness of the declining Sensate Culture and being disillusioned by it…by tragedy , suffering and crucifixion it will be purified and brought back to reason.’

The Future Age

When the West inevitably returns to a more spiritual mode of existence and to absolute values though, what religion will it be that is followed? Will it be Christianity or will it be (God forbid) Islam or some other faith?

The decline in the grip of Christianity on the West since the ‘Enlightenment’ has been driven by a strengthening of the materialist world view of which Sorokin spoke which now dismisses spiritual explanations entirely, believing that whatever cannot be explained by science cannot exist (vide Dawkins). This means (and is meant to mean) that the miracles of Jesus are fraudulent and therefore the story of Jesus as told in the Gospels including the key miracle of his Resurrection is a lie.

Crossan the Arch-Sceptic

The rationalist attack on Christianity by those whose intellectual horizons are defined by an acceptance of a closed system of cause and effect has effectively culminated in the work of John Dominic Crossan, a member of the so-called ‘Jesus Seminar’. In an honest attempt at scholarly enquiry, Crossan concentrated on individual items of the traditions about Jesus and decided whether or not they were genuine in ‘archaeological’ fashion, digging through three ‘layers’ of data to reach the historical Jesus.

The first ‘cosmic’ layer is of pan-Mediterranean models of patronage and clientage and fundamental values . Next comes the mesocosmic layer; Jesus’ immediate historical context, then the microcosmic layer which relates to the literature concerning him. The results are then interpreted in the light of Graeco-Roman history and anthropological models in a way appropriate to the historical contextualisation of the data. This method, so Crossan argues, reveals the historical Jesus.

The Jesus of Crossan

Well, who is the Jesus according to Crossan? He is merely a social and political reformer who posed a threat to the authorities. His burial and resurrection did not happen, although his crucifixion certainly did.In terms of historical significance, it is the life and mission of Jesus that are important for Crossan. According to him, Jesus’ death was not of the greatest significance. This contrasts with the view of Paul, for whom what was of ‘first importance’ were the death burial and resurrection of Jesus (1 Cor15:3-4).

Crossan ‘s Scepticism Dismantled

Tom Wright exposed Crossan’s approach as circular. He points out that Crossan’s dating of materials results from his understanding of Jesus rather than the other way around. Crossan’s intellectual horizon; his view of the world as a closed system of cause and effect, leads him to the a priori dismissal of supernatural intervention in the world whether working outside the ‘laws’ of nature or within them. Therefore the miracles (except Jesus’s healings, which in his opinion do not in fact contravene the laws of nature) are inventions. These other miracles, the turning of the water into wine; the feeding of the five thousand - they are all fables designed to show Jesus as in some sense a divine being. He was in fact merely a social and political reformer who posed a danger to the authorities. The Passion story, the accounts of the Resurrection - they are fictions concocted to reveal Jesus as fulfilling Old Testament prophecies and to deal with power struggles and other problems in the early church.

Tom Wright gets his teeth into Crossan

However, Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham who is now Research Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of St Andrews argues persuasively that if Jesus was merely a social and political agitator it is hardly likely that his followers would have attributed to him the importance that they did, nor having fled when he was arrested would they have come together at a time when their own lives were in peril as his associates unless something momentous (his Resurrection) had occurred.

Wider Intellectual Horizons: The Miracles and Quantum Mechanics.

Ben F Meyer (‘The Aims of Jesus’- Princeton 2002; ‘One of the most important books of its type of the Twentieth Century ‘) rejects Crossan’s out –of-hand denial of the possibility of the miracles. Restricting himself to supernatural intervention working within the laws of nature he bases his opinion on the demonstration of the philosopher Bernard Lonergan’s cognition theory ( ‘A Study of Human Understanding’). Lonergan embraces Quantum Theory which has done away with the seemingly inexorable determinism of cause and effect. It shows that there are a number of possible outcomes for any event.

Amazingly, an observer creates an outcome by collapsing the possibilities through observation. The outcome appears to be more and more likely the more it is expected; in other words, faith orchestrates outcomes; the greater the faith the more likely the outcome. So for example, Jesus could quite conceivably have turned the water into wine or walked on water and have done so without contravening any ‘laws’ of nature.

Meyer holds that the widespread historical assumptions that miracles must be discounted may themselves be discounted as culturally determined and little better than reductionist encumbrances to legitimate historical method.

Crossan’s Methods attacked

Meyer attacked Crossan’s approach (inspecting individual items of the traditions) as refusing to see the wood for the trees. Jesus must be seen as a whole through the narrative of the Gospels rather than in the fragmentary way Crossan espouses which only succeeds in failing to capture the integrity of the portrait of Jesus’ personality and missing the whole point of his story. Meyer also contradicts those who assert that Jesus never made any claims about himself. Drawing on the philosopher Collingwood’s views on intentionality he shows that Jesus demonstrated who he was through his actions.

Meyer and Lonergan

Meyer based his own approach to the study of the question of the historicity of the Gospels on Lonergan. Lonergan’s view is that ‘understanding’ occurs in a three stage process of the experience of sense data, the questioning of the data and the grasping of it as an intelligible unity in an act of insight, followed by a judgement of the truth or falsity of that understanding according to criteria determined by the knower. Only after the completion of this three–stage process of experience, understanding and judgement can the knower can truly be said to ‘know,’ or grasp, the ‘virtually unconditioned.’

Accepting the possibility that the miracle stories are true, Meyer’s conclusions are that the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ own miracles and his Resurrection, as well as his teachings, are correct in all essential particulars.

Further Validations of the Truth of the Gospels by Modern Scholars

These conclusions are supported and extended by the work of Tom Wright (‘The Victory of the Cross’ etc) and by other recent Scholarship such as the textual analyses of Craig Blomberg (‘The Historical Reliability of the Gospels’) and Richard Bauckham (‘Jesus and the Eyewitnesses’ and ‘The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple’. ( Bauckham identifies the ‘Beloved Disciple’ as St John, who wrote or dictated his Gospel and who was present at the Last Supper, the Crucifixion and the Empty Tomb).

The Christmas Message of Hope

The Christmas Message of Hope then is that yes, the Gospel Story has survived the worst that its enemies have thrown at it and has survived more or less unscathed. The historical Jesus is indeed pretty much the person that believers have always thought him to be, the Jesus of faith. And so his birth and his mission really are events we can celebrate.

And because they are real, there is hope for ourselves, our Nation and for our Civilisation.

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Thomas Jefferson

"Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that thesepeople are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the tworaces, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature,habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them."--Thomas Jefferson: Autobiography, 1821. ME 1:72

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A few quotes from history

"The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the State." (Dr. Joseph M. Goebbels)

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote! (Benjamin Franklin)

"Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise." (Adolf Hitler)

Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth lieBut rather mourn the apathetic throngThe cowed and the meekWho see the world's great anguish and its wrongAnd dare not speak. (Ralph Chaplin 1887-1961)